You don’t have to be the Amazing Criswell to make some predictions about how the workplace will change, given the convergence of Internet technology, younger employees and soaring gas prices. According to some recent prognostication by job placement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., we could be seeing:
The end of business travel. This is a no-brainer, considering rising airfares (not to mention fewer flights, long delays and the fact that airlines treat their customers like terrorist cattle), pressure to become environmentally responsible, and businesses continually squeezing the bottom line. Four-day workweeks. If you live in the burbs and work in the city or vice versa, you’re feeling the pain. Gas is around $4.25 a gallon here in Chicago. With portable technology abundant, merciful employers (or smart ones focused on retaining talent) are already offering staffers the option to work at home periodically. Can the four-day work week standard be far behind? Eliminating corporate headquarters. Real estate values are tanking, and it costs a lot of money to heat and cool that big glass monolith. A feasible alternative could be renting out smaller office spaces that are easier for employees to get to. The death of the cubicle. With more employees telecommuting or on flexible schedules, cube farms might become a thing of the past. And the corporate emphasis on team projects also requires replacing cubicles with common areas and community work spaces.
Has your agency implemented any workplace changes in response to the ability to telecommute and/or the economy?

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I don’t know about you, but when I see the word “outrage” used in a headline in an insurance publication, I tend to sit up and take notice.

That’s exactly what happened last month, when I saw the headline in our sister publication National Underwriter about the reaction of some trade groups to Florida Commissioner Kevin McCarty’s support of legislation that would ban credit scoring.

So far the bills haven’t gone anywhere, but their very existence testifies to the ongoing rancor surrounding this touchy issue. Supporters like NAMIC and PCI point to the proven correlation between financial irresponsibility and the likelihood of filing an insurance claim and laud the method for its reliance on personal responsibility rather than income, sex, race or place of residence. Critics claim credit scoring is a “proxy for race,” and its use unfairly targets minorities and the poor.

My own not-so-empirical studies — e.g., conversations with agents — indicate something else. From what I’ve heard, producers aren’t that wild about credit scoring themselves, primarily because it presents another hurdle to clear before they can place coverage for a customer.

It’s also interesting to speculate on what impact, if any, our floundering economy will have on the credit score controversy. As unemployment and inflation keep creeping up and Americans dig themselves deeper into debt just to buy groceries and fill their gas tanks, will “bad” credit scores become an epidemic?

 
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Insurance is a service industry in a global service economy — which means our customer service skills had better be top notch. But just how good are they?

Earlier this month, CFI Group came out with its second annual Contact Center Satisfaction Index (CCSI), a survey that measures customer satisfaction with call centers in eight industries, including insurance.

Although overall customer satisfaction with call centers gained 3 percent to a score of 72 out of 100, one in five customers end their contact center experience with unresolved problems, leaving them twice as likely to defect to another.

The satisfaction rating for insurance call centers was a bit higher at 75 percent — up from 68 percent in 2007 — as were overall scores for insurance CSRs at 80 percent (from 77 percent in 2007). These scores measure courteousness, interest in helping the customer, speaking in an understandable manner (well, as understandable as you can get with insurance), knowledge and effectiveness in handling an issue.

Impressive? For the most part, yes — although insurance CSRs’ “hard skills” of actually resolving a customer’s issue was only 73 percent, compared with 87 percent for retail CSRs and 81 percent for banks.

What does this mean for your agency? Plenty, if you rely on CSRs for cross-selling your customers in this tough economy. The survey shows that 42 percent of insurance customers relied on call centers to place an order or check on an order’s status, up from 35 percent in 2007.

According to the report, “Self-service as a business model appears to be slow-coming to this industry. The nature of this particular service and the complexity of different insurance plans and rate schedules force some customers to seek personalized human intervention, in the form of a contact center and a CSR.”

Smart insurers and the agents and brokers who represent them already understand the importance of CSRs in this or any other economy or market cycle.

What’s your agency doing to recruit, train, educate and compensate your CSRs?